Cyberattack on Lithuania
July 6th, 2008
In what appears to be an imitation of last year’s high profile attacks on Estonian national cyber infrastructure, Russian nationalist hackers once again demonstrated their displeasure at the actions of another Baltic country’s political leaders by defacing over 300 Lithuanian websites this week, including the website of the ruling Social-Democratic party.
Screenshot of one of the defaced Lithuanian sites
Last year’s attacks were in response to the relocation of the World War II memorial commemorating an unknown Russian soldier to a less prominent location in Tallinn, Estonia’s capital city. This time, the cyber attacks were triggered by the act of the Lithuanian parliment, the Seimas, which on June 17th prohibited the display of both Nazi and Soviet-era symbols in public places. The prohibition was strongly condemned by Russian government officials, who expressed outrage at the perceived moral equivalence between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Similarly to the events of last year, nationalistic furvor was actively promoted on the Russian blogosphere and once again led to actions of political cyber-hactivism.
WWII Soviet Soldier Memorial in Tallinn.
Its relocation in April 2007 triggered a series of Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks on Estonian networks
Juozas Olekas, Lithuanian minister of defense, has called the defacements a ‘cyberattack on Lithuania,’ while the Prime Minister Gediminas Kirkilas, who is visiting in the US this week, called the situation “very serious” and declared that he would to raise it in his discussions with U.S. officials.
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